High Definition Digital Television is now being increasingly broadcast throughout the country. Many users have complicated digital receivers and set-top boxes arranged in a variety of ways to receive both digital and analog television, as well as High Definition Television (HDTV). Each system can require different troubleshooting techniques.
In analog television, when a problem arises the picture typically degrades in a way that the user understands. For example, the picture may become fuzzy, or lose horizontal synchronization, to name only a few. This poor picture, however, provided the viewer with some information as to the source of the problem, thereby enabling the viewer to attempt a correction on his own, often with at least some limited success.
However, when a digital television channel degrades or is broken at the source for one of several possible reasons, the picture simply fails to display leaving the viewer with blank screen; hence the viewer has no idea as to why the channel is not being displayed. Digital television reception failure can occur for many reasons, each of which requires a different solution. A digital receiver performs several steps to recreate the program being transmitted, such as RF conversion, transport recovery and packet decoding. A failure in any one of these steps will result in a blank screen. Yet the solution for each of these steps can be significantly different. Moreover, the process is generally a non-linear process, so that making a change in the wrong part of the process can lead to more problems, thereby making it difficult to return to the initial state.
The present invention is therefore directed to the problem of developing a method and apparatus for enabling a user to understand why a digital television channel is not being displayed.